


Emotion That's Taken Me Over

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 10:31:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14283006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Goten should have known that there was going to be trouble when Trunks spent too long talking to the two baristas when he went to get their drinks





	Emotion That's Taken Me Over

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know how often i'll be able to participate but i wanted to do something for the boys for [dbnextgenweek](https://dbnextgenweek.tumblr.com)

Goten should have  _ known _ that there was going to be trouble when Trunks spent too long talking to the two baristas when he went to get their drinks.  Both guys were doing the flirting thing with him and Trunks was giving it right back--which gave Goten the same rotten feeling he got when he ate too many golden berries--and he sat at their table, waiting for his coffee.  He  _ shouldn’t _ be mad that Trunks was flirting because his own dumb feelings for him were his own problem.  It wasn’t as if he  _ meant _ to fall for his lifelong best friend and he wasn’t going to burden Trunks with his affections, that he so clearly didn’t return.

He came over, carrying their drinks, all teeth and flushed cheeks.

“So,” he began and handed him his cup. “First off, they messed up our names on the cups.”

He held up his own clear cup full of cold brew coffee that had “Goten” written on its curved side.  Goten looked at his strawberry frappe to see that, indeed, Trunks’s name was scrawled on it.

“Oh,” he said with a shrug. “That’s fine.”

It wasn’t as if the contents were different.  Trunks slid into the seat across from him and began to busy himself with unwrapping both of their straws.

“Yeah, but here’s the thing.  So, uh. They want to go on a date.”

Goten took the proffered green straw and arched his brows.

“Wow, two boys at once?”

He rolled his eyes as he jammed the straw through the opening on the lid.

“No, dude.  They want to go on a  _ double date. _  With us both.”

“Oh.”

Goten glumly sucked on his drink, but even the sweetness coating his tongue couldn’t lift his mood.  Trunks clearly thought he was doing him a favor by setting up a date with these boys when all he wanted to do was go on a date with  _ him. _

“Don’t sound so excited.”

He shrugged and tried to think of a diplomatic answer.

“I just don’t want to date two randos from a Satanbucks,” he replied.

Trunks waved a hand dismissively.

“Don’t be so picky.  It’ll be fine. Except.  Um.”

He flattened his palm against the straw wrapper and licked his lips nervously.  Goten knew by now to brace himself for whatever he was going to say.

“So.  Y’know how they mixed up our names on the drinks?”

“Yeah…”

“They...think...those are our names.”

Goten cocked his brow and tilted his head to the side to fix Trunks with a look.

“And?  So? Didn’t you tell them that?”

Trunks sighed and that was when he knew things were going to get worse.  He knew that sigh. It was a whistling inhale through the nostrils and a short puff out the mouth.  It was a signifier of nothing good.

“Well, the thing is...when I got the drinks, the guy said ‘hey, nice name,’ and I said ‘thanks.’  So now if I correct him, we both look dumb.”

The kind of logic Trunks operated under was a very different logic than most people.  Goten privately referred to it as “Briefs Logic.” He didn’t pretend to understand it, but he often got swept into it.  Even now, when he and Trunks were entering their twenties, he still fell prey to the unrelenting wave of shenanigans brought directly on him by his best friend.

Honestly, since realizing his feelings, Goten wasn’t sure if that sort of logic made him love him more or less.

“Wouldn’t it be less embarrassing to tell him now rather than go on a date where he called you ‘Goten’ all night?”

“Nope.”

_ Briefs Logic… _

Goten sighed and swirled the straw around in his cup, mixing the whipped cream in with the rest of his drink.  This was a terrible idea and he didn’t even  _ want _ to go on a date with the barista guy (or even knew which of the two was supposed to be the one he was dating).  The only person he wanted to date was sitting across from him, doing his best puppy dog impression and failing miserably because he inherited his resting facial expression directly from his dad.  Instead, he looked like a crabby cat and, honestly, it was all the more endearing. Goten sighed. He had it bad and he was in deep. He closed his eyes and nodded slowly.

“Fine.  I’ll go on the date.”

He opened his eyes in time to see Trunks flash a grin.

“Great.  Thanks, Trunks.” He had the audacity to wink after it and Goten groaned.

It was far too late in the game for him to wonder “What have I gotten into?” when it came to Trunks’s shenanigans.  Instead, he just slumped over his drink in acceptance of his fate.

\--

The boys came to their place first.  Some time last year, Trunks convinced Goten to move out of his parents’ house and live with him in an apartment in the city.  This arrangement was less agonizing before Goten realized his feelings, but it was still fun being roommates. Most of the time.

Not tonight.

The boys were named Moche and Whippe and they were.  Nice. Whippe was the one who seemed to take a shine to Goten and he was cute.  Not as cute as Trunks, but that wasn’t fair to him. He seemed nice, though, which made him feel worse about this dumb ruse.

“How was your drink, Trunks?” he asked.

“Huh?” Trunks said and then shook his head. “Oh, sorry.  How was it, Trunks?”

Goten fought the urge to rub his forehead.  This was going to get confusing really quick.

“Good,” he said, once he realized that Whippe was waiting for his answer. “Really, uh, strawberry...y.”

He winced at the end of his sentence, but Whippe laughed like it was nothing.  He went to sit on the couch next to Moche and Goten found himself at a loss for what to do.  He was used to dating, of course, but he rarely had first dates in his living room and he  _ never _ had to pretend to have a different name.

Trunks had the look he got when he regretted a decision he had made but was unwilling to back out of it.  Much like his variation in sighs, Goten knew the expression very well. The part of him that wasn’t annoyed by the prospect of this entire night wanted to take his hand and tell him to just tell the truth.

“Goten,” he said loudly.  He tried not to marvel in the weirdness of saying his own name to refer to someone else--was this how Trunks felt with his future self?--when he continued with, “Why don’t we get a bottle of wine from the kitchen?”

“Uh, sure.”

The second they passed from the carpet to the linoleum, Goten dragged him towards the fridge so he could whisper to him.  It wasn’t the hand holding the sappy part of him wanted to do, but it would get his point across.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said. “Let’s just tell them.”

Trunks shook his head and reached up over him to get to the cabinet where they kept the wine.

“No.  It’s too weird now.  Just go with it.”

“What if the date goes well?  What then?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Goten peered around him to see Moche and Whippe chatting amiably to one another on the couch.  When he looked back, Trunks was comparing two different kinds of red wine.

“Trunks.  I don’t want to lie.”

“That’s nice.”

Goten felt anger flare in his chest.  It was times like these where he wished he didn’t love him as much as he did.  When he was tricky and infuriating and so dedicated to whatever scheme caught his fancy.

“This is just like when you made us enter as Mighty Mask,” Goten said.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on.  It’s been fifteen years. It’s time to let that go.”

Goten grit his teeth. “Trunks!”

He scowled and pointed at him with the neck of one of the wine bottles.

“You sound just like your mother right now.”

He was unable to stop his jaw from falling open.  He was going for the big guns that quickly? Trunks put one of the wine bottles back, grabbed the corkscrew from the drawer, and walked back into the living room.  Goten had no choice to follow, but he dragged his feet nonetheless.

He sat on the couch perpendicular to the other where Moche and Whippe sat and pasted a smile on his face.

“So, Trunks,” Whippe said. “You know my job--what do you do?”

Goten looked from him to Trunks who was pretending not to look at him.  He grinned wider.

“Well, I was supposed to work with my mom at Capsule Corp, but I’m so lazy that I mostly do nothing but freeload off of her money.”

There was a sound of cracking glass and Goten looked to see that Trunks had accidentally snapped the top off of the bottle of wine with his hand.  He didn’t seem to notice, though, since he was glaring at Goten so fiercely that he was surprised that heat didn’t come out of his eyes.

“Uh…” Moche said. “You’re strong.”

Trunks looked at the bottle and awkwardly plunked it on the table.

“Oh, ha ha.  Yeah. Living up on the mountains made me strong,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Goten. “Doing nothing but wrestling dinosaurs for dinner.”

Moche looked as if he wasn’t sure if he was scared or impressed.

“This is a nice place,” Whippe said loudly, noticing the lull in conversation.

“Thanks,” Goten said, unable to stop now that he had started. “My mom paid for it.  She pays for everything. I have no independence even when I pretend I do.”

“Anyone want wine?” Trunks asked loudly.

No one mentioned that there were no glasses.  Trunks left the bottle on the table and folded his arms over his chest.  Goten felt bad, but mostly he was angry. He was roped into something he didn’t want to do because Trunks had another one of his schemes.  Why couldn’t he have just told them the truth? Was his pride that bad?

Was Goten’s?

“So what do you do, Goten?” Moche asked.

Trunks seemed to forget that he was Goten for a moment because Moche asked the question again.

“I’m a chef in a restaurant,” he said. “I come home stinking like sauce and garlic and leave my no-tread shoes in the kitchen for Trunks to trip over.”

Whippe pointed to the bottle.

“Um, I can just drink out of the bottle if you don’t mind?  Is that okay?” His eyes were wide and he looked desperate. Poor guy.

Goten felt bad that he didn’t feel that bad.  His emotions were taken over with annoyance at Trunks.

“I’m very spoiled,” he said. “I don’t have anything more to add to that.”

“I still lived at home until last year,” Trunks said. “With my mom.  So she could do all my laundry.”

Whippe passed the bottle to Moche.

“I’m afraid of dogs,” Goten said, “and I wear tight pants to get attention.”

Trunks pointed at him in an accusatory manner.

“We both do that!”

Goten surged to his feet and shook his head.  He was done with this and, from the looks of it, so were Moche and Whippe.

“Trunks, I’m done.”

“Aren’t you Trunks?” Whippe asked.

“No, I’m Goten.  He’s Trunks, I’m Goten.  You mixed our names up on our drinks and Trunks took it too far because no one ever told him when to stop.”

Trunks got up as well and glared at him.

“Dude!”

“What?  Did you really think this was going well?” he asked, gesturing to the two bewildered boys on the couch who were now probably fearing for their lives from the two weirdos who switched names and could snap the tops off of wine bottles.

“Well, you could have said no.”

“No, I couldn’t!”

He frowned. “I’m not that bossy.”

He was, but that wasn’t why.  Goten had realized the reason why he went along with his plans--why he always had.

“I couldn’t say no because I love you.”

It took Goten a second to realize that the words were out of his mouth and, once they were, he almost slapped a hand over his mouth in disbelief.

“You love me?” Trunks asked.

“No,” he said quickly. “I said that I...love...glue.  I love glue. Which is what we should use to fix that wine bottle.”

Moche visibly gulped and glanced at Whippe who continued to stare in wide-eyed disbelief.

“We should go,” he said finally.

“I do not blame you,” Trunks said.

It was almost comical, how quickly they moved.

“We can never go back to that Satanbucks,” Trunks said once they left.

Goten was too busy reeling at his hastily blurted out confession to say anything in agreement.  He licked his lips and let out another sigh. This was a different one from before and another Goten could recognize.  The breath he exhaled before comforting him. He felt miserable. This night was terrible, he had admitted his feelings, and now he was going to be rejected.

“So...about what you said.”

He jerked his head up. “Forget it.  Heat of the moment. I meant I love you as a friend.”

“Not ‘I love glue’?”

“Shut up.”

Trunks took a step towards him.

“Goten--”

He recoiled and shook his head.

“No.  No--it’s.  Look, I know.  It’s fine.”

“Goten.”

He turned to go to his bedroom but Trunks snagged his arm.  He wasn’t pulling but he held him gently in place.

“Wait.”

He turned back.  Trunks’s hand loosely held him at the widest most part of his forearm and his eyebrows were knit in concern.

“You don’t have to say it,” he said. “I know you don’t feel that way back.”

It was as much of a true admittance as he was going to give.  If he could, he would take the words back completely. Hell, maybe he would go along with Trunks’s dumb plan.  He could even pretend to like Whippe if it meant that he could take back what he said.

“Goten.  Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what...all this was.” He gestured around the living room. “I guess it was me being dumb and impulsive again.  But...do you remember Valese?”

“My ex?  Uh. Yeah?”

“It killed me seeing you with her.” He chuckled. “Jealousy.”

“Excuse me, what?”

He had to have heard wrong.  Trunks was jealous of him with Valese?  Why? Trunks pushed his hand through his hair and the side of his cheek went hollow as he chewed the inside of it.

“I…am pretty sure I love you, too.”

“What?”

Trunks rubbed his thumb on Goten’s inner elbow and licked his lips nervously.

“I dunno.  I thought about it recently, like.  Thinking you were hot and trying to understand  _ why _ I was jealous of Valese.  But I thought you just wanted to, like, date again.  So I found these dudes and. Shit. This whole thing was dumb.  You need to stop me sometimes, okay?”

He didn’t know what to say except, “Hey, I tried.”

“You always do.”

Trunks gave a small smile.

“I didn’t even like Whippe.”

Goten nearly choked.

“Moche.”

“What?”

“You were on a date with Moche.”

He widened his eyes. “Oh.  Shit.”

Goten truly did feel bad for the two baristas.  They clearly didn’t anticipate  _ this _ weirdness.  Maybe tomorrow he would go around and apologize.  Maybe he would convince Trunks to as well.

“So…” he began. “About what I said...and what you said…”

“Right.” Trunks tipped his head to the side and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Goten felt himself grin.

“That’s the only good idea you’ve had all day.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
